However, your range doesn't change. It's still going to go from 0 until it counts up to the original length of string1_list (exclusive). This will cause the IndexError any time string1_list.pop(i) is called.

This will cause the loop termination condition to be checked after each iteration. If you remove some elements from string1_list, it'll still be OK because the loop will terminate before i gets big enough to overrun the bounds of it's container.